Tuesday, July 4, 2017

Facing ever greater difficulty in raising money in the West because
of sanctions and calls by its own growing Muslim population for such a
step, Russian banks are now considering the introduction of Islamic
banking in order to gain access to credit markets in the Muslim world.

Bekhnam Gurban-zade, an advisor to the head of Sberbank, tellsNovyye izvestiya
that his bank is preparing a road map for the introduction of Islamic
banking in Russia and the Duma is working on legislation which would
allow banking on the principles of shariat law which bans interest but
allow banks to become co-investors in projects.

Some Muslim areas in the Russian Federation have been pushing this
idea for the last seven years, but now is the first time that it appears
there is support in Moscow for the idea, the paper says, although there
are concerns about how such a system would work in parallel with the
existing mercantilist model....MORE

Paul Goble is a longtime specialist on
ethnic and religious questions in Eurasia. He has served as director of
research and publications at the Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy, vice
dean for the social sciences and humanities at Audentes University in
Tallinn, and a senior research associate at the EuroCollege of the
University of Tartu in Estonia. Earlier he has served in various
capacities in the U.S. State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency
and the International Broadcasting Bureau as well as at the Voice of
America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and at the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace.